The Good Killers

1921’s Glimpse of the Mafia

Other crimes revealed

While at Raymond Street Jail, Bartolo Fontano spoke with visiting Detective Lieutenant Bert McPherson, head of Detroit’s Italian Squad, and with Nicholas Selvaggi, first assistant district attorney for Kings County (Brooklyn), NY.57

Fontano acknowledged setting a number of arson fires in Detroit years earlier and provided what information he could remember of 16 Good Killers attacks.58

In Manhattan, he said the gang had been responsible for the Dec. 29, 1920, slaying of Salvatore Mauro in front of 232 Chrystie Street;59 the May 1921 killing of Vincenzo Alfano on Delancey Street; the Feb. 28, 1921, killing of Joseph “Longo” Granatelli in front of 189 Chrystie Street; and the murder of a man named Casileo, the details of which he could not recall.60

In the Bronx, the gang had recently shot Angelo Lagatutta. Unbeknownst to Fontano or reportedly to the Good Killers themselves, Lagatutta survived the attack and was recovering in a hospital.61

Fontano indicated that Good Killers were responsible for the deaths of Joseph Ponzo and Francesco Finazzo in Brooklyn, but he could not provide dates and locations for those murders.

His memory of Detroit slayings was helped by information Lieutenant McPherson was able to dig out of police files. It was established that the Good Killers had murdered three Buccellato brothers, two Giannola brothers, father and son Pietro and Joseph Bosco, Luca Sarcona and Andrea Lacatto.

In his revelations concerning the murders of Joseph, Felice and Salvatore Buccellato, Fontano reportedly failed to mention another man, Mike Maltisi, who was shot to death alongside Joseph on May 4, 1919, about two years after the deaths of Felice and Salvatore.62

Antonio “Tony” Giannola was shot down as he stepped from his automobile at Rivard Street on Jan. 4, 1919. He was said to be on his way to pay respects to the family of Pietro Bosco, recently killed in Bosco’s garage at Trumbull Avenue and Ash Street. The two men who served as Giannola’s driver and his bodyguard that day vanished after Antonio was killed. They were suspected of performing or cooperating in the assassination.63

Joseph Bosco soon followed his father. Salvatore “Sam” Giannola was eliminated following an Oct. 3, 1919, bank visit. The gunmen did a thorough job. He reportedly was shot 28 times. Nine bullet wounds were found under his left arm, indicating to the coroner that Giannola saw his attackers and put his hand out in front of him. Luca Sarcona was reportedly killed in the same year, though details of his murder appear lost.64

Andrea Lacatto’s death was significant for several reasons. He reputedly was one of the more accomplished members of the Good Killers gang. The July 24, 1917, murder of a Detroit police officer, Detective Sergeant Emanuel Rogers, was attributed to him.65 Lacatto was also believed to have been one of the two men who betrayed Antonio Giannola.66 He might also have been involved with the later slaying of Detroit mob boss John Vitale.67

Lacatto was killed about mid-October of 1920.68 Detroit’s McPherson revealed to the press that Lacatto was tortured – his arms reportedly were cut off – before he was buried alive.69 Such extreme physical mistreatment seems to indicate a disciplinary killing.

Shortly after the original list of 16 Good Killers’ victims was extracted from Fontano’s confessions, several additional names were added to the growing public dialogue. While Fontano’s memory might have improved with the passage of time and/or the press might have inserted names that in some way fit the Good Killers’ profile, it seems more likely that police departments perceived an opportunity to dispense with a number of high-profile unresolved murder cases.

The Detroit killing of Mike Maltisi was added to Fontano’s list, appropriately if the Good Killers had been responsible for the slaying of Joseph Buccellato. Other additions from that city included Giannola brother-in-law Pasquale Danni, and father and son John and Joe Vitale.

Danni was slain during a Feb. 2, 1919, attempt on the life of Sam Giannola. The two men were ambushed as they entered Giannola’s home at Goddall Street and Biddle Avenue that evening. Danni was hit by four slugs, two in his chest, one in his stomach and one in a leg. Giannola escaped that attack unharmed.70

The Vitales were dispatched during a wave of gang violence in the summer and fall of 1920, when Fontano was reportedly in New York City and unable to witness the incidents.71 Gunmen in a second floor window opened fire on the Vitales as they entered their car in front of 2080 Russell Street on the morning of Aug. 18. John Vitale was wounded. His son Joe, 17, was killed instantly.72

John Vitale was successfully executed a month later. Police decided that he was thrown from an automobile on Fourteenth Avenue near Marantette Avenue before dawn. His body was found in the street with 12 bullet holes in it. Police linked the killing with the earlier appearance of six Sicilian men at the Michigan Central Depot just blocks away. When a patrolmen asked the men why they were in Detroit, they informed him they had just arrived from Buffalo and Niagara Falls to attend a funeral. An automobile then came by and picked them up. Authorities speculated that Vitale might have been driving.73

Additional murders in New York were also linked to the Good Killers. Those included the apparently already solved Brooklyn slayings of Antonio Mazzara and Antonio DiBenedetto on the evening of Nov. 11, 1917. Fiaschetti told the New York press that Fontano statements connected Mazzara and DiBenedetto to Good Killers activities.74

Mazzara and DiBenedetto had both been born in Castellammare del Golfo and their families were tightly knit. DiBenedetto’s clan was also linked through marriage with the Bonventres and Magaddinos.75 (DiBenedetto’s son Charles “Charlie Buffalo” DiBenedetto was a soldier under Salvatore Maranzano and Joseph Bonanno in the Castellammarese War of 1930-31.76)

The two men were shot at close range at North Fifth and Roebling Streets, within sight of the Bonventre family home. Mazzara fell dead instantly. DiBenedetto lingered until he arrived at Eastern District Hospital. Police Detective James Kenny, on his way home from work, heard the attack and chased two men. He managed to apprehend Antonio Massino, who was in possession of an empty revolver. Police kept an eye on Massino’s Manhattan apartment and arrested Giuseppe Martinicio as he entered it at 2 a.m. Two teenage girls, who witnessed the shootings, identified Massino and Martinicio as the gunmen.77

Fontano

Much of the story attributed to Fontano’s confession borders on unbelievable. Certainly, the small barber would have required psychic abilities to acquire details of murders committed in the Midwest while he was in the East. Today, 85 years after the Good Killers were exposed, much of Fontano’s story remains in conflict with commonly accepted Detroit underworld history.

It is widely believed and was generally reported in the press of the time that a gang war erupted between Detroit’s Giannola and Vitale-Bosco underworld factions in 1919 and 1920. The feud reportedly stemmed from Vitale bitterness over being cheated by Giannolas in a business deal.78 A number of the killings listed by Fontano as being performed by the Good Killers have traditionally been attributed to the war between the Giannola and Vitale factions.

If Fontano’s story is accepted as true, the Good Killers would represent a third party in the Detroit underworld conflicts, possibly allied at different times and for different reasons to one or the other of the warring mobs. Interestingly, this view seems to be supported by a report in the Detroit Free Press following the September 1920 assassination of gang boss John Vitale:

“A few months ago a score of new faces appeared suddenly among Detroit Sicilians. They came from Pittsburgh, New York, Paterson NJ and elsewhere. And with their coming began the relentless succession of assassinations that steadily and surely broke the power of Vitale, enemy and successor of Sam Giannola.”79